Public sector ‘fat cats’ who bank huge redundancy payments before finding a new job funded by the taxpayer will be targeted in Wednesday’s Queen’s Speech.

Ministers are planning to introduce legislation to claw back the pay-offs from employees earning more than £100,000 a year if they take a new job in the same part of the public sector within a year of redundancy.

The crackdown on the so-called ‘revolving door’ scam is designed to meet public outrage over the number of executives who bank the money without using it to sustain them through a period of unemployment.

Over the past three years more than 3,200 National Health Service bureaucrats have been handed pay-offs before walking into new jobs in the health service.

Some have landed six-figure roles just three months after receiving packages of more than £600,000, and in one case a husband-and-wife team walked away with £1 million in redundancy only to find new six-figure positions within the NHS almost immediately.

Out of 37 council chief executives who left by mutual agreement from 2007 to 2009, 16 per cent were working in another council within a year.

And at the BBC, over the past decade 233 staff who were made redundant have later rejoined the Corporation – such as Matthew Bannister, the former head of Radio 1, who received a £200,000 severance payment in 2000, only to rejoin two years later as a presenter.

The provisions, which are contained in the Small Business Bill, will allow for a portion of the pay-off to be clawed back depending on the length of time between exit and re-employment.

Although some public sector organisations already have such arrangements in place, ministers say the legislation will ensure ‘consistency and fairness across the whole of the sector’.

The proposals, which apply to cash payments and pension top-ups, will include a legal requirement for individuals to notify their previous employer that they will need to repay compensation.

At the BBC, 233 staff members made redundant over the past decade have returned after receiving pay outs

Failing to do so will give their employer the right to dismiss them or sue them for the money.

A consultation on the new law will also look at clawing back a smaller proportion of pay-offs made to those managers earning less than £100,000.

The only people exempted will be those working for the Armed Forces, National Museums and ‘some majority state-owned financial institutions’.

Nicky Morgan, financial secretary to the Treasury, said: ‘We must make sure hard-earned taxpayers’ money is not being squandered.’